


Spirits of Wrath

by Eleanor Green (eldestmuse)



Category: Lithmeria: The Endless Siege
Genre: Gen, Smithing, aspalaria, bandits, ebon tower, farshield, furor, highgallow, inner ralthoth, inspirit, mediator, witchwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldestmuse/pseuds/Eleanor%20Green
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A talented young Mediator prepares to venture out into the world and discovers something that will have the potential to the balance of power between Aspalaria and Teladir, if only she can master it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preparation

**Author's Note:**

> Lithmeria is a multi-user dungeon revolving around a globe-spanning conflict between the Accord of Teladir and the Aspalarian Sovereignty. It is scheduled to release on October 12, 2012.

Sweat slid down Sabina's forehead and dripped steadily onto the hot coals of the forge, hissing as the heat evaporated it. Her muscles ached, but this was her last project of the day. She had to finish. After completing her task, quenching the last of her weapons in a nearby bucket of lukewarm water, she set it aside and smiled.  
  
The claw she had crafted was primitive, but it would do the job she needed it to.  
  
The first part of her training was complete, all that was left to do was gather the rest of the tools she would need for later; a pack, herbs, and the other essentials of life as an elite soldier in the service of the Sovereignty, like more metals for the armor she wanted to create. She had a future to pursue, and she refused to be unprepared for it.  
  
With that thought in mind, Sabina stretched and headed toward her bunk for some much-deserved rest.  
  
The next morning, before dawn had broken over the mountains, she returned to the smithy to sharpen her new weapons. The horizontal handgrips of the claws made them superficially resemble katars, but instead of the flat, traditional blade of the more common weapon, this one had shorter, curved talons emerging from the hilt. When she was done, the ebonsteel-lead alloy was razor-sharp and more deadly than anything similar in nature. Each individual claw was about the length of a standard dagger, and had viper's glands folded into the metal to poison her enemies.  
  
Rather than sheathing her three new claws, or taking them up in her hands, she set them on the ground and began to concentrate. She evoked a stardart into being and flung the sinister energy at herself, wincing at the pain it inflicted. But despite the pain, she felt her fervor grow, and perhaps because of it, wild, furious wrath was born inside her. She bared her teeth, and it wasn't a smile.  
  
With that, Sabina felt prepared to test her new weapons. She forced the wrath inside her to manifest, and encased what fragments she could catch in the arcane energy it had taken her so long to master. The rest of her manifest wrath dissipated harmlessly, but it didn't matter. She had created enough spirits to do what she wanted.  
  
It took all of her concentration to force the wrath spirits into the claws she had forged, but she did it. The weapons began to dance around her, and she felt their desire to lash out at anything that might harm her. It took surprisingly little effort to drive her spirits toward a more passive role, and the claws took up defensive positions around her.  
  
Sabina nodded to herself; she was ready to venture out into the world. Maybe she couldn't take on bandits or her stronger peers, but she could explore, she could begin to earn her way. There were favors she could grant, treasures to find, battlegrounds to reconnoiter.  
  
She would start in Farshield--as far away from the shadow of the Ebon Tower as she could get.


	2. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A talented young Mediator prepares to venture out into the world and discovers something that will has the potential to the balance of power between Aspalaria and Teladir, if only she can master it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lithmeria is a multi-user dungeon revolving around a globe-spanning conflict between the Accord of Teladir and the Aspalarian Sovereignty. It is scheduled to release on October 12, 2012.

Sabina sang as she walked through the Witchwood. The highway sped her travel east--it was certainly faster than making her way through the half-cleared forest--but it was still a time-consuming journey, and the music helped her pass the time. Her voice was low for a woman's, with a sultry undertone that throbbed as she sang a wild tune with few words and a number of high-pitched undulations.   
  
For the first time in years, she felt free. Alone, with no one to tell her what to do, no one to dictate her actions or to enforce their views of politeness upon her, she felt liberated. Her hair was tangled from the wind, and she didn't care, because she didn't have to. It didn't matter that road dust clung to the hem of her dress, or that her skin was burned instead of tan. Out here on the open road, there was no one to judge her.  
  
With freedom, though, came the sacrifice of safety. There were bandits in those woods, she knew, and wild creatures she had probably never seen before, but it didn't matter. She had a Mediator's training and the fearlessness of youth, she was confident she could hold her own. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps, or maybe she was just lucky. No one attacked as she slipped past the Witchwood lumbercamp and continued on her way along the highway.   
  
It wasn't too long before she stood in Highgallow, wrinkling her nose at the smell of sheep and thanking the gods the Ebon Tower frowned so harshly upon her following that she didn't have to spend any more time on a farm. She was so close to Farshield and the taste of salty ocean air that, despite her exhaustion and weariness with the monotonous highways, she decided to push on.   
  
The sun had set almost an hour ago, but she braved the Ralthoth despite the farmers' whispers that she should wait until morning, when she would have her wits about her. She wanted to sleep in a tavern, not a barn; she wanted beer and company that didn't smell of goats. So she took the road just a little farther east, until she accidentally stepped off the dirt trail and onto a goat path that led deeper into the forest instead of keeping to the outskirts, like she'd meant to.  
  
The claws that circled her quivered faintly. She almost didn't notice the way they shook, but even when she did, she ignored it, too inexperienced with her spirits to attribute the cause to anything but her own exhaustion. When she came upon the abandoned cottage, she was tired enough of walking--seemingly in circles--that she decided to stop and get her bearings.  
  
The trees were too thick to reckon using the stars. Though she could make out a few isolated pricks of light in the night sky, the cover impeded her ability to view the constellations as a whole. She couldn't calculate her position, but she could at least rest, and maybe take a moment to contact some of her peers. There was a chance that one knew the local area well enough to help her get to Farshield, though the notion rankled.  
  
She was so close!  
  
Before Sabina could even decide who she wanted to ask for help, a piece of rope slithered up behind her like a snake and tried to wrap itself around her throat. It took all of her willpower not to screech like a child when she felt the scratchy hemp bite into the sensitive skin there as she jumped up and away. There was no one behind her, and she didn't sense anyone in the room. If a Marauder had snuck up on her--not impossible, this close to the port, though Aspalaria was winning the war and the front lines were far to the east--he would have had to reveal himself for the attack.   
  
Despite that, the rope didn't stop choking her.   
  
Sabina tried to slide her fingers under the rope, to try and use brute muscle to save herself. It didn't work--and her blades weren't doing anything to protect her, though she could feel them quivering when she focused. The rope was probably too close to her neck for the simple spirits to try and interfere, she figured--and then she realized that she could sense more than her own spirits.  
  
The rope was animated by spiritual energy that was supposed to be unique to Mediators. Another Mediator wouldn't attack her-- _would they? No._ She couldn't doubt her own kind, and she was too minor a target for a traitor to fix their attentions on. And now that she thought about it--difficult to do as her vision began to gray and she choked violently, trying to breathe--that spirit felt different. It felt wild, untamed, as if the wrath manifest inside of it hadn't come from a person, but from the anger of the forest itself.  
  
A shudder wracked Sabina's frame, because she didn't know how to control the spirit that animated the rope.  
  
She did, however, know that a blade could cut through rope, no matter how deadly, so she drove her spirits into a fury and forced them to lash out against the rope. If they accidentally cut her, so be it. She could heal wounds after the rope was rendered harmless.   
  
If it could be rendered harmless. She had never heard of wild spirits like this before, but she knew that her own weapons were nigh-on indestructible.   
  
The rope fell to the ground in pieces after her inspirited blades sliced through the hemp, and Sabina stomped down hard on the pieces to ensure that they were truly harmless. The slivers of rope didn't move, and Sabina filed the information away in her prodigious memory; these wild spirits could be chased from the objects they animated. She wondered if they were just capricious, not wanting to be tied down to damaged goods, or if the wild spirits had been harmed by the stronger spirits of her animated wrath.  
  
For now, it didn't matter, but even though the Ebon Tower didn't control the Mediators, her superiors would want to know of the odd quirks hidden inside Ralthoth Forest, and the scholars would want to know everything they could about these wild manifestations. Perhaps they could teach the Mediators something new--perhaps they could be harnessed to another use, to do things the spirits Mediators created could not.


End file.
